Making do with less of more

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I'm a tad confused. Isn't America supposed to be the most powerful and influential nation in the history of the planet? I know that kind of civilizational chest-thumping these days is considered gauche outside of country music, but, last I checked, we're still the strongest society humanity has ever produced. So why are our elected officials now behaving as if the country is one giant, brittle piece of antique porcelain?

Friday, barring an unlikely outbreak of bipartisan comity, the mandated spending cuts to the federal budget, known as “the sequester,” will kick in, lopping $85 billion – or about 2.3 percent – off the federal budget. The result, according to official Washington, will look like something out of “Lord of the Flies.”

To avoid the cuts, virtually every member of the Obama Cabinet has been tasked with public hyperventilation.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has threatened that federal meat inspectors will be furloughed, virtually shutting down the interstate sale of meat products. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned of paralyzing gridlock throughout the nation's airports.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has suggested that the cuts will weaken security at the U.S.-Mexico border and leave the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. If all of this can result from a 2.3 percent budget cut, it's worth inquiring as to what the other 97.7 percent is spent on.

Here's the rub, though: even these “Draconian” cuts don't actually reduce the level of real federal spending. Feel free to read that last sentence again, provided there are no sharp instruments nearby.

The sequester doesn't represent cuts to the amount of money that Washington is currently spending, but, rather, cuts to the rate of future spending growth. So what the government is saying, in essence, is that it can't provide the same level of services with even more money.

The exercise that opponents of the sequester are currently engaged in is known as “Washington Monument Syndrome.” The theory (proved by repeated experience) is that if you want to scare the public out of spending cuts, you announce that all of the most beloved government services will be on the chopping block, rather than making antiseptic cuts that no one will much notice. You claim that teachers, police and firefighters will lose their jobs. You threaten to shut down access to the Grand Canyon.

If you're California, to use one recent example, you warn of having to shut down 70 parks while secretly sitting on a $20 million surplus in the department's budget.

Now, this isn't to say that the sequester is an unalloyed good. Virtually no one in Washington is comfortable with the indiscriminate fashion in which it spreads cuts across defense spending and domestic programs. A more targeted approach that took less from vital programs and more from outright waste (does the federal government really need to spend $1.2 million doing a study on the video game “World of Warcraft”?) would be far preferable.

Republicans in Congress, however, have calculated that they can either accept imperfect cuts or get none at all. With the national debt now at well over $16 trillion, they've determined that whatever inconveniences attend the sequester will pale in comparison with those that will result from failing to slow the runaway train of federal spending.

What's most galling about this entire spectacle is how much low-hanging fruit there is in the federal budget. It's hard to argue that cutting $85 billion is a back-breaking burden on Washington when, according to a report issued last year by the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, the federal government spent $115 billion in the 2011 fiscal year on payments made in error. That's enough to cover the entire sequester, with $30 billion left over to hire an accountant sufficiently talented to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Remember those facts when you hear the sequester referred to as an “austerity measure” in coming days.

Austerity is making do with less. The upshot of the sequester will be making do with less of more.

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